Over the years I have learned that some mouldings are not as robust if knocked about in transit and repeatedly troublesome mouldings will sooner, or later be something I choose not to order again. Life is too short to be bothering with repeatedly getting grief time after time with the same mouldings.

As most of you already know, I use mostly bare unfinished mouldings and hand finish them myself. One particular advantage with this is that small dent can be made to pop out by soaking the dented area and applying heat, which causes the cells in the wood to expand to something pretty close to their original size. By the time you have given a light rub with some fine sand paper and hand finished it, the defect is no more.

As has already been mentioned, suppliers who deliver using their own vans can be extremely useful in solving these problems. I don't know how these particular suppliers rate as one against another, nor would it be particularly far on my part to make any comparisons, but the only one which delivers mouldings by van in my area is Wessex Pictures, who I have found in my own experience, have never damaged anything that they have supplied to me.

No doubt, other framers can say the same for many of companies. Regardless which company delivers in you area, maybe it's worth talking to them about your requirements. You may be pleasantly surprised.

shogunswb wrote:I think to get the complaints through to the right people we need to complain directly to the directors by finding their email address & see if they reply or if they pass it down.

Im sure the directors know how many credit notes their companies issue. And I guess some also follow this forum.They will be well aware of the grumbles from framers.The question is can they do anything, or will this situation simply continue to annoy suppliers and framers well into the future.

I didn't name the companies because I wasn't sure if it was just me, stupid I know but thats the feeling I had.It is true that I have less problems with deliveries & quality from Arqadia than from Lion but I also think that this is in part to the types of mouldings I get from each supplier.I don't hand finish my frames because it's not my market & the time & cost just doesn't stack up for me.It was said earlier in this post that no other industry would put up with it & they are right.If i had a new fridge/freezer delivered & it had a dent or two in the door & bits grey primer showing through on the side where it hadn't been painted properly I would send it straight back to where it came from. It's very unlikely that I would say "Not to worry I'll get a bit of filler & paint & sort that out myself so that you don't have to worry about it. By the way I'll be back next week for a new cooker".I'm sure the directors do have an idea of the problem but I also think that not enough of us are going back to them with the real quantities involved.

Kudu Frames - I agree - lion packaging is a nightmare - takes a long time to unpack and then there is all the disposal issues. Was wonderful when there was a company run van service with the ever helpful ,courteous and very likeable Roland at the wheel- I wonder if, with the cost of couriers, replacements, packaging , loss of customers and good will etc - the financial benefit of moving to courier service has been negated?? I must say however, that Lion have always been good at refunding cost of damaged mouldings but surely prevention better than cure. I still buy most of my moulding from Lion.

I also use Centrado - they have their own vans and deliver three days a week so that is helpful.

I've never understood how flawed mouldings can get passed in these days of computer control, but I've come to the conclusion that the manufacturers' QC parameters are deliberately set very low so that they can pass mouldings which really should be scrapped. I've just a done a job where a length of moulding had a knot in the face which jumped out at you. Instead of scrapping it, the manufacturer had tried to disguise it and get away with it. If I'd sent it back, I'm sure the distributor would have credited it, but then I'd have had to wait maybe up to a week before the next delivery. Since I could work round it, it wasn't worth the hassle or the delay, but no thanks to the manufacturer, who regrettably has indeed got away with it. And like Steve N, I've had mouldings with different depths from one end to the other, plus a whole range of other defects. The poor and inconsistent quality of mouldings is very dispiriting but it would take somebody with a lot more clout than I've got to make a difference.

I started to put together an email yesterday to Lion & Arquadia but just as I started another complaint came in from a client about silver paint that was missing from the sight edge. The first complaint I had is what started this post & to get a second within days is not good. One lesson I suppose is that if your quite ill, don't think that you can carry on as normal because that is two faults that I missed that normally wouldn't have got by me.Anyway on getting the complaint I went out to the workshop & unwrapped 3 more wraps of that moulding to find that 2 are completely un-usable & the other 4 will need areas chopping out of then so out of 6 lengths I do not have 1 useable full length. I've got another 3 wraps to look at today so I guess that it will be more of the same.I didn't carry on with the email yesterday because what I wanted to put in it at the time would not have been constructive but maybe I will get back to it today after I have processed yet another partial refund.

sorry that you are not feeling well and hope you are better soon.Whenever you come across damage or quality issues I think its imperative that you contact the supplier ASAP and also that you check all other lengths of the same supplied on that particular order. Do you do this?Can you say which moulding it is and also what the nature of the damage is that it effects all 6 lengths out of 3 wraps. It's all a bit vague at the moment but presumably you can discount damage in transit.Whatever the background is, it is not acceptable and the supplier need to be told.

Feeling much better thanks.If I come across damage then I will open another wrap so that I can do the job & if the problem persists then I will contact them but for a single length or bits that have to be chopped out of several lengths I gave up reporting because it was just so time consuming but I'm fed up with it.The moulding is a black cosmopolitan with a silver sight edge or in this case a partial silver sight edge.I unwrapped the other 5 bundles as it turned out so had 16 - 3m lengths of which 11 had paint missing.Out of those 11, 2 are firewood & if I measure the other 9 from the end of the moulding to where the paint is as it should be, then that adds up to another 4.5m so straight away thats over 10m or £42. But it doesn't end there because most lengths are the same the other end & there are bits in the middle which would also need to be removed so it's unlikely that I would be able to make a decent sized panoramic frame out of 11 lengths of moulding.How can that be right?I have hopefully attached a picture although I think it might crop a bit off but you should be able to see the problem quite clearly.

That does not look like you were just unlucky, with so many bad lengths, that must be a really bad batch problem. So much for quality control by the manufacturer. All to often the poor old framer is doing the quality control inspection for the manufacturer, which saves the manufacturer having to employ an member of staff to do this.

I'd like to say that this does not happen very much, but I've seen mouldings like this before, so I know that this is not particularly uncommon. I used to regularly buy bundles of discontinued and slightly damaged mouldings and I think that quite a bit of it had been returned from other framers as defective.

I'm not complaining, after all when you pay about 15 pence per foot for a bundle of mouldings and some of the mouldings might be anything up to £3, or £4 per foot list price it's still a good deal, but you get to realize that suppliers can be getting lumbered with quite a bit of mouldings returned by the framer as unsuitable for use. Sorry to disappoint anyone, but the problem is quite common these days and it ain't gonna improve any time soon.

Notyouraverageframer wrote"Sorry to disappoint anyone, but the problem is quite common these days and it ain't gonna improve any time soon"

It will improve, if we all start reporting and claiming for it, this Monday, I had rep call on me when I was cutting moulding, I showed him some moulding with defects and I tried to cut around them, I couldn't even get a frame out of it, so chucked the lot I the bin and said, "I need a credit for the whole length, not just for the bits of defects as I can't use any of it" I got it as well, he emailed head office and I got the credit not later that day, I also warned him that this is the way it's going to be, I'm going to claim for full lengths, I will put them aside for his company to pick up and I want replacement sent out as I still need the moulding to do the job. It will eventually get fed back down the supply chain, that quality needs to improve

I agree with Steve, we have to report the damage.I've had issues with the same moulding, it does seem to be prone to the sight edge flaking and I've stopped using it. I find the plain black a much nicer moulding.

I had a similar situation with canvas bars and would have to go through several hundred bars per delivery weeding out the damaged and defective ones then get credit notes for them. Now I hardly get any so things can change if you can only be bothered to tell the suppliers who in turn tell the manufacturers.

We have all had similar experiences and if someone hasn't they have been damn lucky is all I can say.Suppliers are generally more than happy to credit you for bad moulding. They expect it.

Personally, I haven't had any bad finished moulding for many years. Haven't had any good either. I only buyunfinished stuff. Even if I do get dinged moulding it has to be fairly catastrophic to be a total write-off. The worse thing is split rebate lips which sometimes run the whole length. I save these sticks, rip off the rebateand stick a narrow moulding on in it's place.

Handfinishing does take longer, but the benefits in low wastage and reduced stress levels make up for it.

I think it is a perennial problem which seems to be getting worse. Regarding the delivery, clearly it would be a good idea if the suppliers all got together and formed their own delivery company. If you had Simons, Arqadia,Lion and Nielsen all feeding into one courier who have been trained to handle moulding properly, then the damage would be resticted to poor quality moulding, which I think is far less of a problem. Although I did have one piece of moulding that had an "allowance" of 500mm and the two damages were 500mm apart. Unfortunately the frame size meant I couldnt use the whole length because the damage was close to the centre.

Been reading this with interest....and realised I am not alone.Shown, sample I asked for only 4 week ago in top of picture. Close match to one of thre of customer's existing frame. Ordered three lengths. Out of stock so ordered in.Just opened them up and all 3 vary greatly from each other, one has a black mark on it and all are much lighter than the sample.Now have to see if I can get darker one - will probably need another order - or if customer happy with paler ones which do match the picture but not the existing frame he has of the third. First order from this customer and it does not make a good impression. Have had many dings/irregularities/variations from this supplier and thought just my bad luck but the more I read the other comments the more I realise it is common. I expect some slight variations in grain and colour when ordering wooden mouldings but this is nearly a whole tone darker. I can only think the sample they gave me is old stock which has darkened over time - is this possible?My main supplier is local but often still means an extra trip there to sort problematic mouldings.Tried mail order from Lion a couple of times but got the strapping damaged and one of the mouldings was very warped which I then had to photograph and email to them to prove...I worked in a packing and despatch department for 16 years. I always always checked consistency and quality and packed securely. Really not that difficult!!! So have emailed them with photos and asked them to phone me tomorrow to sort.....

I still haven't got round to finishing the email to Lion & Arqadia yet as I need to be in he right headspace but will certainly mention the problem with the straps.

It definitely seems to be that too many framers think it's only happening to them, thats the way the industry is & nothing can be done about it but look what's happening with plastics at the moment. All we need is Sir David Attenborough to make a film about the plight of the worlds framers & bobs your uncle

With the bare wood mouldings I tend to order quite a bit because of the colour/grain variations, unwrap the whole lot then try & match two or more lengths together as needed. I can understand the difference in colour & grain because no two trees are alike & the wood is different depending on which part of the tree its taken from but having said that I have just discarded two half lengths of a pale bare wood moulding because they have a load of quite heavy black lines running through them which again comes down to no quality control.

It's quite common to find variations in colour and tone in bare wood mouldings and stained wood finishes. Some suppliers will try and send you lengths which are reasonable well matched, if you ask, but don't count on the warehouse staff being as discerning as you are expecting them to be. In my experience their idea of matched lengths of wood and yours, or my expectation still are not that great, but it's better than no attempt at matching at all.

If anything, things appear to be getting more difficult with hard woods and bare woods, particularly with pine mouldings. Not everyone likes working with pine mouldings, but if you like stacking mouldings, then you get some quite useful mouldings at quite good prices. Relatively recently, some of my favourites have been discontinued, which kind of spoils my ways of doing things as you need mouldings which fit together well and look the part.

The other consideration with pine is that some mouldings use a selected grade of pine with almost no knots and then others use an unsorted grade of pine and you end up ask for selected lengths with minimum knots and defects. I wonder how many forum members remember those nicely colour washed Albor quarter sawn straight grained pine mouldings that you used to be able to get from Euro Mouldings. Well, I used to hand finish my own copies of these mouldings, but the moulding that I was able to do this with has now been discontinued.

We are fighting a bit of a losing battle on the mouldings front right now. There are a number of reasons for this, including the cost of suppliers maintaining stock levels, while currency variations are affecting how much money needs to be tied up in stock and the fact that prices for buying in that stock are volume related. So as some mouldings are made to that suppliers own requirements, one possible solution is get that same moulding made cheaper somewhere else. Unfortunately when the mouldings arrive with the supplier the quality may be not what we are used to.

These are some of the hard facts of life, that we are now facing in the current business environment. However, that does not stop us from being proactive in choosing which mouldings we will buy and which ones we decide to avoid. If we find a particular moulding is not up to what we are expecting, then it's competitive market and we may have other choices where we don't encounter the same promlems. For myself, as most members already know, I like hand finishing and this can be a very helpful way of avoiding problems with moulding defects and damage, but it does not suit everyones needs. If you are already worked off your feet with too much work with no possibility of expanding our work space, or our work force, then factory finished mouldings make a lot more sense that hand finishing your own.